


prelude 12/21

by clairelutra (exosolarmoon)



Series: I want the K [7]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, angst angst angst, look i can't just fluff and smut my way through these there's gotta be angst s o m e w h e r e, not really shippy oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exosolarmoon/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>this is what i brought you may forget me</em>
  <br/>
  <em>i promise to depart just promise one thing</em>
  <br/>
  <em></em><br/>    <b>kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep</b><br/>  
</p>
            </blockquote>





	prelude 12/21

**Author's Note:**

> [ inspired by this beautiful fanart here](http://clairelutra.tumblr.com/post/133325463810/daughterofthestars08-daughterofthestars)

8: Eyelid Kiss

She didn’t deserve this.

No one, _no one_ did, but...

Especially not Marinette.

Brave, strong, beautiful, _kind_ Marinette, hanging limply in his arms without a breath left in her.

She didn’t deserve this.

She deserved birthday parties and university degrees and children and someone who would love her for the rest of their joined lives. She deserved to bat her pretty blue eyes at a guy she liked, she deserved to inherit her parents’ bakery, she deserved midnight laughter and shared secrets and the kind of friendship that only existed between teenage girls.

She deserved the world.

She deserved _life_.

Adrien hadn’t known her, not really. Not beyond the fleeting moments when they overcame their mutual shyness: stolen shining bubbles of time that shattered at the slightest touch, but in their existence proved that, beneath the stutter and the shyness, Marinette had a keen, brilliant mind, a smile that would take anyone’s breath away — not least of all his — and a kindness so vast, so _intense_ that just being in her presence felt like sinking in honey.

Now her eyes were shut, never to open again, and the lost potential of what he _could_ have known, what they could have been together if only he hadn’t waited, if only he hadn't thought _tomorrow, tomorrow he would talk to her_...

It cut worse than he could have _imagined_.

Gone from this world and on to the next, she took some infinitesimal fraction of the world’s light with her. Life would go on — he would heal, her family would one day pick themselves back up again, her seat behind him would one day be filled by another student — but the stars would never quite shine the same. Not for him, not for anyone who had been blessed enough to have lived with her, around her, to have come in contact with her and had her warmth and light and generosity touch their lives.

Chat laid her cooling body down as far from the disaster as he dared go — only a few blocks, but hopefully far enough to escape further crossfire — and touched her forehead.

No reaction.

It was something he should have expected, but it made his blood chill all the same.

He released a slow breath and drew his hand over her eyes, making sure they really were closed before stooping to plant a soft kiss on each.

“In hopes that your next life will be as wonderful as this one,” he whispered between the kisses — a tribute and a farewell, an acknowledgement of what would never be, what never _could_ be, now.

Standing, he turned to leave.

Mourning could come later. Right now, Hawkmoth had a lot to answer for.

(Upon detransformation, Plagg told him that Ladybug had also died in that fight, that they needed to find a new holder _now_ or akuma would win the war in short order, that they had _no time_ , and suddenly Chat had bigger things to worry about than a pretty classmate whose time had ended far too soon.)


End file.
